Circles

I've recently started using WatchThat Page to track the blogs I'm interested in - blame TU120 with its relentless "you-will-try-new-tools" mantra! A leftover entry from my ECA topic was the Guardian Unlimited Books Blog... don't normally have time for that sort of reading, but hadn't got round to trimming the watch list....
Anyway, today this item caught my eye: Boris Vian: Still spitting from beyond the grave. I hadn't given Boris Vian a thought since about 1970, when I first came across his anti-war song Le Déserteur while I was staying with a French family on an exchange visit, heard it on the radio, borrowed my exchange partner's book of Vian poems & learned it by heart. It played a part in crystallising my vague intention to study French at university & thus helped shape my life... What's strange, given how poor my memory is these days, is that the song came straight back into my head & I knew I had to track it down. Google found me this page all about it. (It's one of those pages that breaks all the rules about good website design with glorious panache, but you don't care, because it's the work of an enthusiast & has the content you're looking for - even if it is mostly in Italian!)
Minutes later, I was enjoying this: YouTube image montage with the original 1954, banned from radio, recording. Musially, it has dated, but the sentiments are as fresh as ever.
The other, bigger circle is that we have a daughter, our last to fly the nest, planning to go to the same university we attended, to study - languages. Last week we attended an open day there & it was an odd mixture of nostalgia & sobering realisation of the passage of time.
She's the same age I was when I first heard Vian.

On the meaning of questions

I've just been invited to complete a survey designed "to help the University understand how ALs [Associate Lecturers, ie tutors] feel about their role".
I'm at a loss to understand the difference between these three items, which I'm asked to indicate my agreement or disagreement with:



Taking any one of them separately, I struggle to understand exactly what it means. But moving from one to the next, I struggle even more to see the difference between them.

Is there meant to be a difference between "my personal values" & "the things that I value in life"? I suppose I could take a literal interpretation of "things" as "physical objects", in which case maybe the OU would not be expected to share my fondness for pizza with double jalapeno or my collection of Wildhearts CDs. Does the OU value "things" in this sense at all?

I suppose there might be a distinction between "provide a good fit", "match" & "are very similar to" in that they could represent points on a scale running from identity, via passing resemblance, to complementary opposites (in which case the 3-1-2 ordering of statements could be a ploy to check my consistency of response).

Who knows?

For what it's worth, I decided that my attitude to all three was "disagree slightly". If I'd been thinking more clearly, I would have asked awkward questions about the assumption that the OU & I are mutually exclusive categories.

Tony Storey RIP

No, you wont know him, but he was instrumental in introduucing me to computers, almost 20 years ago. I can't even remember why, now, but he & his wife used to lend my son an Amstrad computer over the weekend - one of those early machines with a green & black display, that you booted from a floppy disk. After the kids had gone to bed, I used to word-process my handouts on it & play Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (text-only version, of course).

Tony was always around. He was involved with the village school, the doctor's surgery, the parish council, the village magazine, Neighbourhood Watch... Sometimes unkindly mocked by the local children, he was truly larger than life.

We were all shocked to learn from the village magazine that Tony had passed away suddenly last month, at the age of 64. We'd been away on holiday & missed the news, so I don't know what was said in the local paper by way of tributes. But I found this self-portrait on Amazon, where he'd written a review.

In my own words
I am 57 years old and live in Healing, a village of some 2,200 population, about 3 miles from Grimsby in North East Lincolnshire, UK. I am Chairman of the Parish Council and Neighbourhood Watch Co-ordinator (are there Neighbourhood Watches in the US?).My religion is Soto Zen Buddhism, with a generous measure of Taoism and a sprinkling of Pure Land Buddhism.My other main interest is Astronomy, with the emphasis on Astrophysics, Cosmology and SETI. I have been married to Anne for 34 years next month; we have no children but six cats with, at the moment four kittens. I retired from full-time teaching in 1993 but still teach regularly on a supply basis, that is, I go into schools to cover for staff who are ill or on courses. I have chosen a picture of a butterfly because of Chuang Tzu, one of the other great Taoist writers, who dreamed that he was a butterfly. On awakening, he thought, ' Was I Chuang Tzu, dreaming that I was a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly dreaming that I am Chuang Tzu'?

Tony

R.I.P.

There's a lot of it about

Further to my previous post...





Not to mention:






Become a blogger & get free German lessons!

We're all Europeans now!

Here's the message Blogger gave me as I was publishing the last post:



Vielen Dank :-)

Ee bah gum!

It's nice to see from this story that the BBC is taking to heart the campaign launched this summer to preserve the Yorkshire dialect.







Nor can this be dismissed as a mere isolated typo. The same expression is proudly used twice on the section's front page:


(I really think it has to be deliberate, as the writer later refers conventionally to "Its learning facilities", so s/he knows the difference between it/its/it's.)

Bluefluff 2.0

Inspired by Martin Weller's slidecast, I've started a new blog.

It's not really a case of "Bluefluff is dead - long live Bluefluff" because I'll still be blogging here, too. It's just that part of me needed to move on :-)

Metadiscussion

I'd forgotten this useful term, but it popped back into my head tonight after yet another tour of the OU forums I read, thinking "yes, but where's the substance?" as interminable discussions about discussions unfolded.

These metadiscussions relate to both form & content. As far as form is concerned, they are typically prompted by a contributor's use of a particular font that others find difficult to read, but can just as well be about the message order, or the correct attribution of material quoted from previous posts, or the amount of quoted material, or any number of similar issues. As far as content is concerned, it's often humour that proves to be the flashpoint - a sarcastic remark that's resented, a joke that treads on sensitive ground, a light-hearted riposte that's read literally & interpreted as deadly serious. A common second cause of contention is the scope of discussion, in particular the desirable or permissible ratio of chat & banter to serious course-related debate.

Form metadiscussions usually peter out into conciliatory statements about how we're all different & no single message format can suit everyone. Content metadiscussions tend to flare into high-minded exchanges about political correctness & freedom of speech, & can smoulder for weeks or months.

It occurred to me that the prevalence of metadiscussion is perhaps the single most significant difference between online & face to face discussions. Discussions round a table don't often founder on disagreements about speaking order or voice volume (though those can be factors in formal/official meetings). Nor do they usually need more than a couple of minutes to divert into joky/trivial/anecdotal asides & return - without recriminations - to the topic.

None of this is new of course - either the phenomenon or analysis of it - as this commentary in a study from the early days of Internet discussion groups shows,

The lightbulb joke is as relevant now as it was when I first read it ten years ago!

A day of two halves

First there was the unpleasant prospect of combining two phobias - travelling alone on public transport & going to the dentist. The famous English Summer gave me a 'get out of jail free' card on the first, as a thunderstorm hit just as I was due to leave...the 10 minute walk to the bus stop just wasn't feasible with all that crash-bashing & the sky emptying itself, so I chickened out & phoned for a taxi. Some of the recently flooded roads were almost impassible, so I didn't feel too guilty. The dentist appointment resolved itself into come-back-next-month for tooth-saving under sedation. So that's OK then. (I know, what a wimp!)

In part 2 I got back to normal: eating, working, communicating in joined up sentences, that sort of thing. Continued my dashing ahead with Latin while there are no TMAs to mark - laughed at the ablative of instrument & spat in the face of comparative & superlative adverbs. Don't reckon much to how Mercury is duping Sosia (not to mention what Jupiter's getting up to with Amphitruo's wife) but I'm sure it will all work out in the end.

Oh, the ants are back...