Respect & Imprecision II

Pentadact commented:

Would this be a bad time to note that "lets" in the context of "allows" doesn't have an apostrophe?

I've recently got to reading two magazines more closely, one very mainstream and in-your-face, the other more niche and intellectual. I'm finding the mainstream one wins dramatically in the precision stakes. Almost everything on the page is expertly judged to /specify/, not just intimate, what the game is and how it works, while the niche rag drowns in rambling blocks of longer but /less/ precise words. Simple, common language only becomes inadequate when the writer lapses into repeating a vocabulary of clichés, not because they're tired but because they're being used out of habit rather than their specific purpose. More elaborate and abstract writing has its own vocabulary of clichés too, though: they're less tired because fewer publications write in this style, but they're no less imprecise.

I don't think you have to like and respect other people who do your job to take pride in it yourself. In fact, I find the terrible attitude of a lot of journos on press trips actually spurs me to be more professional, attentive and respectful, and take my work there more seriously.

(Changed it, ta! Criticism always welcome.)

I don't really mind what intellectual depth a magazine writes to, though my prose will always tend to the purple. I just care that the words are being used to mean the ideas that they are commonly known to mean, so that the literature and science of today will keep meaning the same thing to suceeding generations. Yes, language changes with time; but there's no reason to let it and reasons to stop it (consistency of idea communication). I agree, however, that the worst offenders against language are those who deliberately confuse the meanings of their sentences through needless obscurantism (there I go), which is why I have a particular distaste for academia. There's a breed of academia, including philosophy and english literature, that maintains itself by spewing nonsense words out for every situation.

I'll quote Wikpedia on Logorrhoea then get back to the point.
In his anecdote collection Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, the physicist and raconteur Richard Feynman describes a time when he participated in a multi-disciplinary conference discussing the nebulous topic "the ethics of equality". Feynman was at first apprehensive, having read none of the books the conference organizers had recommended. A sociologist brought a paper he had written beforehand to the committee where Feynman served, asking everyone to read it. Feynman found it completely incomprehensible and feared that he was out of his depth—until he decided to pick one sentence at random and parse it until he understood. The sentence he chose (to the best of his recollection) was

The individual member of the social community often receives his information via visual, symbolic channels.

Feynman "translated" the sentence and discovered it meant "People read". The rest of the paper soon made sense in the same fashion.

Further examples are easy to create:

Doctors say that the best way to lose weight is to eat less.

The medical community indicates that downsizing average total daily intake is maximally efficacious in the field of proactive weight-reduction methodologies.'

He is the sort of person who will call a spade a spade.

This man is a member of the personality class exhibiting the tendency to term a pedally operated humus redistribution device a pedally operated humus redistribution device.

It's not other people I have trouble with, though I will admit that I'd rather be the lazy bottom of a class of intellectuals, than lazy and mediocre amongst similar mediocrities (all this is theoretical, note); it's the lack of respect for myself the job engenders that really causes problems. I find I can't appreciate what I do, when what attracts praise or at criticism is so random. There seems no standard that carries from magazine to magazine (or indeed in websites) and the feedback from our readers is so limited, negative and mostly illiterate. The other writers on my magazine have stopped reading our forum, out of fear I think.

So the readers don't respect us and the management don't respect us. Despite the approbation of our peers (or at least those, like yourself, who are respectable), it's hard to maintain self-respect in the face of that.

Anyway, I hope I've inspired you on a few press trips. ;-)

Respect & Imprecision

Alta L. Price on quibbles.

See, it’s a slippery slope. It could be argued that these aren’t matters of right and wrong, and are instead a question of imprecision. But they’re imprecisions I can’t deal with because, as I see it, these people approach their professions with imprecision, which implies that they neither respect nor love what they’re doing enough to care about getting it right.

Normally, I let things slide. I don't mind minor errors, I don't try to argue with the fanatics and I look upon friend's idiocies as endearing foibles. When I do argue, it doesn't bother me, it's just a laugh. Yet in the last few weeks, my prissiness has got the better of me and I've started correcting people, complaining when I felt complaints needed to be made. Price is right (no pun intended) that our society no longer prizes accuracy. There's almost a link between the lack of deference for linguistic standards and our society's emphasis that everything is acceptable, a link even to *gasp* multiculturalism. Sounds like I'm being a bad liberal here, going against freedom doesn't it? The claim is there is no standard, no norm but each individual has the right to do anything they want to; it lets people be sloppy, let's them claim that they're 'not wrong but just different.' In terms of language, I'm afraid there is right and wrong and it's a necessary moral system. Language is the essential tool for communicating ideas. If I mean something by a word and you mean something different by the same word, we find ourselves with an obstacle to communication.

Regarding his comments on "approaching professions with imprecision" I normally don't love my profession; the standards for entry are far too low and set too low by our employers and it has fundamentally discouraged me over the years, making me not work as hard at my job as I could have and not respect myself or others for doing it. Eurogamer, notably, is one site that sets its standards relatively high and I have more respect for the people it employs. Edge magazine, despite my concerns over its increasingly populist focus, also has a care for correct, clear and useful language. However, Future's magazines, particularly on the console side, seem to care little for talented writing and more for speed of copy production. If a job is advertised (which it often isn't) we tend to employ the best of the limited selection of passable candidates who apply, rather than looking actively for an ideal candidate. I look at the sub-editors I admire, the ones who can turn lacklustre and poorly written copy into sparkling reams of perfectly fitted prose (their names reveal them to be uniformly women: Katharine Davies, Liz Raderecht, Vanessa Hards and Clare Lydon), and I find their numbers in decline and the respect for them sadly lacking. Those who are good are often discouraged by the mediocrity around them; our art staff, for example, are all immensely qualified and talented but it's very rare that I see any of them doing original design or varying from templates. Notably our company pays its marketing and advertising personnel very well and promotes them to its top positions, seeing them as the key to larger profits. However, their profit is grounded in the editorial staff and if they're no good or dissatisfied, and hence imprecise, then the magazine is no good.

Edit: So let's trace that thought more clearly. I don't like imprecisions in language because (wide reason) clear communication is necessary for the maintenance of society (assertion to be justified elsewhere) and because (narrow reason) words are my life. Imprecisions in language are on the rise because laxity is in general on the rise. Laxity is on the rise because our society made a choice in the 1960s to be more permissive and that choice accorded with the needs of the economy; that people's history, knowledge and skills don't matter so long as they can do the job that is available. Ah, balls, I've lost the thread again.

Sami Al Haj

I am so upset right now. I have just been listening to Letters from Guantanamo on Radio 4 and it has left me really, really distraught. It is a set of letters from Sami El Haj, a camera operator with Al Jazeera captured crossing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1999. He had dual passports and visas; he had done this many times before in his coverage of the war. The border authorities accused him of filming Bin Laden then imprisoned him in Kandahar, before selling him to the Americans. Yes, selling him. As Musharraf admitted this week, the Pakistani government was a) threatened into joining the war and b) paid well to pass along captives. Notably, the Americans have admitted to paying bounties for Al Quaeda fighters but claimed to be surprised that the Pakistani government was involved. What terrifies me is that the Sudanese-born Sami is lucid, clever and an amazingly literate writer, whose letters are rich, stuffed with emotion and strength in the face of alleged horrors (the ones that make it through the censors). “The enormous statue cries out freedom and justice to all. But gradually the lights around Lady Liberty grow weaker and we see that she is either deceiving or deceived.” It is not clear whether Sami is an enemy combatant, a fanatical warrior who wants to see the west die. However, it seems unlikely and if this man, if any of these men are criminals, then let us try them and be done with it. If the allegations do not stand up in a court of law, then let them go free. Sure, follow them if you want, if you still suspect them. Nevertheless, for these individuals this horror should not continue, it is illegal, against the Geneva conventions, against the moral law that trickles even inside me. I am horrified and angry, convinced by the honest beauty of this man’s words. More Sami, as far as I can remember from the programme, “The light in the statue’s hand flickers and may go out. One day men may stand around this wreck and say one day ‘here stood a great thing, liberty.” God, if you exist, damn Guantanamo bay and those who uphold it.

The Daily Dahlia

Following James Elroy's wondeful study of a gruesome murder in 50s L.A., The Black Dahlia, crime hackette Lynda La Plante has written a money-spinning rip-off called The Red Dahlia, set fifty years after the first murder, timed to coincide with the release of the Scarlett Johansen movie and plagiarising large portions of its illustrious predecessor (I've not read the book, I'm just assuming this). However, La Plante has missed out a key part of Elroy's fiction, which is slight references to a recognisable and real popular character involved on the peripheries of the plot, and also a touch of corrupted authority. Which is why I present to you this day this exclusive excerpt from my forthcoming novellete / vpdodcast / mystery play "Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dahlia";

Joseph enters the room. His shaggy knuckles are pulling together his shabby multicoloured coat of dreams and he's obviously drunk; stumbling, mumbling, filthy. He could even be a journalist.
Joseph: "A crash of drums, ugh, dum-de-dum, a flash of li-ur-hic, I need a shite, yarr, balls."
Joseph collapses in a corner, his brothers sell his sleeping body to slave traders, he travels to Egypt where he narrowly avoids being blown up by Arab extremists / Israeli pre-emptive surprise airstrikes / errant Western Cruise Missiles and becomes advisor to the democratically elected Pharoah Godking III The Shit, before being reconciled to his randy father and brothers in a touching scene (Warning: no touching). Whilst Joseph is dozing one day, his wife sells his magic hair to a passing salesperson/genie/disguised grand vizier, removing the gift of hard-drinking that has allowed him to charm/booze his way to success in the court of The Shit. After disgracing himself at a state banquet, he is expelled and narrowly avoids becoming a lion's dinner in the arena by showing off his excellent manicure skills, before wandering out onto the streets, drunken, where he is accosted in exactly the same manner as before by a passing flowerseller. She reaches out to the erstwhile bigwig's drunken figure, holding in her hand a bushy tuberous perennial which she hopes to exchange for goods or indeed services.
Passing Flower Salesperson "Excuse me sir, would you like a flower?"
Joseph proceeds to vomit copiously over the poor flowerseller's bloom, turning it a variety of shades depending on which course of his fantastic banquet he is regurgitating. It is hence technicolour and also amazing so our story can
End.

I expect this to sell millions.

Twice Weakly

A hop, a skip and a fortnight goes by, casting askance glances shoulderwise. Curious at glinting Fortnight’s eye, I call up my calendar and find that every day for the last month is heavily annotated, the little squares filled with digitals. Since the 14th Aout, I’ve been to Manchester once, to see the paternal side of the family, back to London, to somewhere in Wales, to see some Folk (they were green, by all accounts but brother’s and I’s), back to London, to Paris, to play poker it seemed, back to london (for a hour), to Buxton, to drink the county dry (not touched a sip of the mineral water in fifteen years, perry burns a hole in yer gut/tering that the water would just trickle through, like a human filtration system, stalgatites growing out of your ruptured ulcers into interintestinal interstices. Or is stalagmites? Mite is right, as Kissinger always said), lack to bondon, was pimped up at Saint’s Row party (those girls shave awfully close to the thong), to Oxford, to watch the first of my comrades in the League of Strident Singletons do the blood brethren thing with a GIRL (Benedict, how could you betray our sacred vows and do all that pledging stuff? How can you make a solemn vow on anything about the future, when you have very limited control over it? WRONG.), that is, marriage, tack do bonlon, went to the first christmas tat party (walked away with screaming monkey, disembodied eyeball, candy clothing, book of arse called Cheek, etc), danced with zombies (they do an excellent version of thriller, more surprising produce grand finger food, in retrospect too many fingers, yuk), to the Isle of Wight (where the barrows crawl with the disembodied souls of campers, doomed to eternally wear their Bestival costumes, because they can’t find the irritating little bra hook small fo the back that dismantles the whole flapping crepe paper and wire edifice), talonknobdoc antbloodconk backtolondon, games played bomberman, godfather, heroesannhiliatedempires, legostarwarsII, ninetyninenights, &c, went to Sega’s Kew offices today, sat by the river, walked in the rain, stared for hours at the lightning in the night, Fortnight’s certain lead foot is descending to complete her passage, must bid adieu and wish that the next of her sisters proves as entertaining even if little old brain up here (hello!) can’t hope to hold her.

LIFE UPDATE OVER.

UGLY

I just went downstairs for yet another photoshoot, to provide comic characters for the magazine. As per usual, I supplied most of the outfits from my wardrobe (what does that say about my dress sense?) I was dressed up as a motty-style football commentator, with sheepskin and mike, glasses perched precariously on nose's end. As the photographer's shooting away, he says "you're really good, you know?". I'm kinda flattered but not sure what he means. "I mean, you're a natural in front of the camera." Soon he'll be telling me to loosen my top. "Have you ever thought of doing character work? You'd be really good!" I'm starting to get flattered and laugh nervously. "There's this agency, don't get me wrong, called Ugly, who could do with someone like you." My lifelong dreams about a life on the catwalk, on the catwalk, yeah, fall into shards of glittering angst. He's joking, isn't he? "Seriously. I've got loads of shots of you now, just drop me an email and I'll pass your name along." I get back to my desk and, guess what? He wasn't lying. So. Should I agree to this and go to work for a modelling agency called ugly? Or should I pep up my pride and pretend I don't fancy a bit of cash on the side?

I mean, don't I look pretty here:

Row your boat

Myself: Begob!
The Pissed People of England: What? Wherefore the irishisms?
Myself: Agh, I’ve just got back from the Saint’s Row launch event which was lavish in the uttermost.
The Pissed People of England: More so than the brothel-party in Paris? Than the Scarface binge in Madrid? Than the Wincle Beer, Cider and Spirits festival? (sotto voce) Lawks, I can still taste the turps in that perry.
Myself: More so indeed. Mainly due to the copious booze, gyrating pole dancers, and awesome break dancers. I am myself positively tented with the memory.
The Pissed People of England: That’s a nice image for no-one. So whyfore “begob” with such acid vim?
Myself: Ah, it was for this game, and we did the exclusive everything, yet they forgot to invite us, like we were but passing tools to be ground down and discarded. Yours truly only sneaked in on his wits (large as they are, I strapped myself under them so that the cyclopean doorman should find only Nemo in his fumblings), but the rest of my crew/gang/massif/posse/team/cabinet decided not to attend.
The Pissed People of England: By your state, twas a wise move on their part.
Myself: Indeed. Now, didn’t I have work to do..?

Gods balls Father

God’s balls, Father
…
oh, sod, I said GOD’S BALLS, FATHER.
Humph… sntft. What is it? What’s seized your piss-addled brain the night?
Oh, did I wake you? Apolo-
You did and deliberately, you inadequate pancreatic wretchery. For what craggled notions am I dragged from me som…sombre… somnabulances?
Oh, just… well, blast and blood, I was trying to decipher these here notes I’d left myself. Sweet nothings on a train ticket’s back, but they were important to me last night.
Grrmmm. Balls. Let’s have a gander.
Well, I think the scrawlings about the Cerulean giants, with hairs of flame, that might be about Brian Blessed. I remember him distinctly, ringed with marigolds.
Brian Blessed’s so short of arse he’s asked Pavarroti for a loan, closer to Lautrec than Finn MacCool. Can you not read your own hand?
I fear I may have been under several influences, hence the suppurative hieroglyphics and the pleasant drooling marks. My arm’s sodden too. You’ve known my talk since my early days – perhaps your gimlet will have more luck?
Well, there’s something there. An inkling – long ago, in a land resounding with silence, you -
Cut to the chase.
You were pissed on expensive cider, you were at the Green Man Festival, you only enjoyed the silent movies and the Bengali breakfasts.
Balls. Is that it?
Nah. Nah. You wanted driving lessons, a new hard drive, some presents, and to write a story about an engraver writing down a text no-one can read for the benefit of future generations. Pretenious twat.
Oh. Well, drunk or not, I had ambition then. Perhaps I should drink more.
If it would cease such prattling, what’s the harm? You also scrabbled here about renovated pubs and your love of fine chips. Definitely in your cups and no worse.
Ah, yes, I’ve found new bumps on my head. Must have crackled my pate somewhere as well.
Says nothing of that here. Though I remember the soft caps you used to wear against such eventualities… There’s a gap for drool…I think you must have rested your head here, as there’s a guard’s validatory stamp on your cheek and then there’s babble about us people never looking up any more, missing the moon and the crenellations of dead architectures appreciated only by pigeons. And something about why you’ve got John Cale’s 4’33 on yon leccy music device and, yes…! you talk of clumsiness. You were terrified that the swinging’s of the virgin pendolino would upset your excessive pizzle in the train’s toilet bowl, so you tried to flush quickly and stuck your arm under the tap.
Dampness explained, wonderful. My hangover’s cutting in, out with my final words if you please.
Wined in the Parisian Café Carmen by Nazis and whores, you won a five hour game of poker, for naught, and drowned your sorrows in rural beer festivals (Elton and Wincle) galore.
Hence the head.
So the noggin, yes.
I’ve heard enough. Budge up, I’m going to bed too.

Feck me, Bezoars worked!

"Modern examinations of the properties of bezoars by Gustaf Arrhenius and Andrew A. Benson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have shown that they could, when immersed in an arsenic-laced solution, remove the poison. The toxic compounds in arsenic are arsenate and arsenite. Each is acted upon differently, but effectively, by bezoar stones. Arsenate is removed by being exchanged for phosphate in the mineral brushite, a crystalline structure found in the stones. Arsenite is found to bond to sulfur compounds in the protein of degraded hair, which is a key component in bezoars."

Bezoars (gall stones/pearls formed in the alimentary tracts of ruminants) being the alchymist's favoured tool against poisons, I'm surprised to find evidence they actually work!

There's Something Floral Here

websiteasgraphs
Originally uploaded by Hot Grill.

I really like the images produced by this little gizmo - www.aharef.info/static/htmlgraph/

In case you can't be arsed following the link, it turns websites into geometric representations, in a most charming manner.

Here’s the legend, if you care.

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
grey: all other tags